Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Sergius]

So anyway, I'm about to begin my "elephant trap" thingy in my fortress (Udibgigin, "Syrupflier"), but in previous attempts I always have the same problem.

I make it like this:

code:

,########
,|ccccc.#
,######d#
,|....#d#
,####.#d#
,|....#d#
,######d#
,|ccccc.#
,########

where 'c' = cage trap and 'd' = deadly trap. '|' is a door, so I can control whether animals go thru the harmless tunnel, the trapped tunnel or can't pass at all.

Everytime an animal "herd" goes in, the first one, their "leader" is trapped in the first cage. What this means is, the rest of the animals just stop and try to keep him company, so they don't go thru and fall in the rest of the traps, nor do they go away. This usually goes on indefinitely until one of my own dwarves tries to collect the cage and gets stomped on. Or if I lock the doors, the elephants just stay there forever.

Anyone knows any fix to this? Is there a better design that doesn't have this "bug"? (not a bug in the game, a bug in the trap design, I mean)

Thanks for the help.

[Karlito]

I've had similar problems with other animals but I think the problem can be fixed somewhat with a wider hallway.

[Jaqie Fox]

Two wide, and traps on every square.  I never have that problem like that.

[puke]

forgive me for tooting my own horn, but I believe that this is how its done:
http://www.bay12games.com/cgi-local/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=11&t=000714

http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-875-morulingtak

edit: to answer the question you actually ASKED though, i've not had that problem.  the only problem ive ever had with cage traps, is the animals over running them before they could be reloaded.  the animals will generally continue moving a few squares past the caged leader, and this is usually sufficient to cage the other animals.

unless you run out of cages, of course.  the 2-wide solution does sound ideal.  you might consider supplimenting your inner door with some raiseable bridges in case of a seige.  nothing like having trolls knock down the door to your animal trap.

you dont actually have to worry about wither animals can take an alternate path, as if you want to shut off the trap you can just leave the animals isolated on whatever part of the map they happen to be on, until they make a different pathfinding decision.  you DO need an alternate path for your dwarfs, however.  so its a good thing you have the smaller inner passage.

unfortuneatly you cant set a door to allow animals but forbid dwarfs.  it would make things like this much easier.  i guess we can do that in the new version though, by simply forbidding the passageway instead of the door.

[ September 26, 2007: Message edited by: puke ]

[Leonidas]

You could dig a third hallway around your trap hallway, then smooth it and carve fortifications from the safe side, then bring in some marksdwarves to kill 'em at pointblank range.  That's what I did, anyway.  Wide hallway is probably easier.